My travels and interests in all things fabric, stitches and quilting!

Nature

May 07, 2016

Last week we spent our final days in South Africa tucked into a quiet valley near Clanwilliam in the Cederberg Mountains in the Cape. It was a short holiday after leading our 22 day tour. We stayed in a 250 year old classic Cape Dutch converted barn in a citrus orchard. Perfectly quiet, sunshiny days with black velvet nights sprinkled vividly with southern constellations were just what we needed. Clanwilliam is centre of rooibos tea production - it can only grow in this small region of the Cape. I bought a kilogram to bring home. We spent a day exploring one of the 3,000 San rock painting sites in the Cederberg. The paintings go back at least 8,000 years and evidence is that these small, gentle people lived here for over 100,000 years. I found this wonderful little video about their click language. The San were beaten almost to extinction within 200 years of the Nguni tribes migrating from the north and the Europeans settling the Cape as a water station en route for spices in the East. However San genes are strongly present in the local populace and their cousins, the Khoisan/Bushmen, have been pushed deep into the driest places in Africa: Botswana, Namibia and the Kalahari Desert.

The San left their mark in these fascinating, vulnerable paintings. Priceless treasures, they are our earliest human art and speak of a cohesive culture connected to nature. Many of the paintings are fading due to lichens, weathering time and sometimes senseless vandalism. I found it profoundly moving.

Coincidentally, after viewing the paintings I read an article about how an exploration company wants to frack the remote desert areas where the Khoisan eek out a fragile existence in Botswana. They are to be displaced yet again. Heartbreaking.

The day we die a soft wind will blow away our footprints in the sand.When the wind has gone,who will tell the timelessnessthat once we walked this way in the dawn of time?- from an old song of the San.

In this image a newborn zebra teeters on its wobbly legs. Keenly observed and captured in ocher by a San artist on the rock walls of the Cederberg.

Our accommodations near Clanwilliam. It is said the San taught new comers how to drink rooibos tea.

February 29, 2016

Whalebone vertebrae, many hundreds of years old. I found this at Red Bay Labrador at the earliest known Basque Settlement in North America. the Basque hunted whale and returned to Spain with whale oil. There are 9 holes drilled in the centre of the vertebrae, perhaps made by researchers looking at the DNA of the whale.

February 23, 2016

I photographed this detail from a piece of handwoven raffia cloth in a shop in South Africa. Decorated with beads and cowrie shells. Some of the squares are dyed with indigo. It has a kind of pom-pom edging.

February 16, 2016

Cabbage field, Second Peninsula, Nova Scotia. This farm at the very end of the Peninsula is a sweet spot. I took this photo many summers ago when I spotted this field of crinkly cabbages, so like crushed velvet.

September 19, 2015

The exciting discovery of Homo Naledi in South Africa is hot news. Homo Naledi is the most ancient human species ever discovered in Africa. The scientific buzz from the discovery is shaking up our knowledge of the origins of humankind.

What good fortune that we decided to visit this very area on our tour next year! On-site archaeologists will guide our field trip to a dig in this area known to be the richest site for early human fossils, we’ll learn why this beautiful area is called the cradle of humankind.

If you’d like to join us to visit this area, we still have some space on next year’s South African tour www.africanthreads.ca It is packed with fascinating cultural experiences, arts and wildlife, good food and great accommodations. We’ll drive through a wildlife reserve on the way to this archaeological dig and see lions up close en route! Contact me soon as the deadline is mid-November.

November 17, 2014

I often visit this pine tree grove on my daily walks. There is an open meadow in themiddle and the still strength of tree verticals are so restful. The strong verticals are obvious, but my eye is drawn to the soft horizontal lines in the pine needles and moss. Short stacatto horizonal lines break up each tree trunk, the marks of where branches once grew. This place brings me peace and also upliftment. Soon this will be under a quilt of snow.